New Orleans-area residents got their first opportunity to comment on a proposed $417.5 million project to divert freshwater and sediment from the Mississippi River near the Myrtle Grove community to build wetlands in Barataria Bay.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz, The Times-Picayune archiveThe Mississippi River West Bay diversion was photographed Aug. 10.

The project also would include dredging sediment from the river to be placed into the area closest to the diversion.

Andy MacInnes, project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers for the proposal, told an audience of about 40 at Joseph's Hall in Crown Point that the purpose of the project is to reduce the continuing loss of wetlands in the area, something that would benefit fisheries and wildlife and increase protection from hurricane storm surge.

Tuesday's meeting was the first of three that kick off the corps' writing of an environmental impact statement to support construction of the project.

The project's exact location and design are still unclear, and would depend on extensive modeling of the effects of delivering water and sediment into the Barataria wetlands and open water between there and the coast.

Several oyster growers and fishers attending the meeting urged that the project be limited to using pipelines to deliver sediment from the river to rebuild wetlands, focusing on the potential effects of continued releases of freshwater on shrimp and oysters.

"We just created 577 acres of wetlands in this area using pipelines," said Ralph Herman, a resident of Myrtle Grove. "It took only three months and cost $27 million. Just imagine if you used that $300 million for the project in the same way. You'd probably get 9,000 to 10,000 acres for the same amount of money in a few months." Dan Coulon, an oyster farmer, said even if a freshwater diversion were operated at Myrtle Grove in pulses -- releasing a large amount of sediment and water during spring flooding months -- the combination of freshwater with water from Davis Pond and other diversions would destroy brown shrimp in the bay.

"We know you can freshen the water all the way to Grand Isle," he said. "If you run all of these at once, you can forget about fisheries as we know them today."

But Jim Tripp, an official with the Environmental Defense Fund who serves on the Governor's Advisory Commission for Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation, said the project must be designed to take advantage of the cheaper cost of the river delivering sediment, as the price of fuel necessary to move sediment into place by dredging increases over the next 50 years.

"If we had a static system, or were still building deltas, we wouldn't be here tonight," he said. "We're here because of the way the sediment has been managed. We have a sediment-starved system and it definitely needs sediment."

And Steven Peyronnin, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, said even finding the money today to pay for dredging has been fruitless.

"The sad truth is I've gone knocking on the doors of Congress and the money simply is not there," he said. "So the answer is to try to restore sustainability to the system (with the diversion). Aggressively use dredged material to put the bones back on the skeleton and then nourish it with diversions so it will continue to last beyond the typical 20- to 30-year project life cycle you plan for, and make it last the life cycle of this community, for centuries."